The hub of information for the Second Judicial Circuit Guardian ad Litem Program, our blog contains posts with announcements, news and events, articles, periodicals and additions or updates to our website.

This page contains published posts from the February 2017 archive sorted chronologically with the newest at the top.

New Events

We regularly host, sponsor and support a variety of events that provide community outreach, increase awareness of our program, help recruit new volunteers, raise funds and furnish training to our volunteer guardians ad litem. The following events were added to our calendar.

Event Update

Thank you to Keith Baxter, Joey Gans, Tallahassee State Bank and Holy Mother of God Greek Orthodox Church for their contributions. The Event Sponsors section of the event page was updated to reflect their sponsorships.

CAII Cupcakes and Cookies for Kids is a friendly annual competition for amateur and professional bakers, as well as an opportunity for the public to raise money for our program by sampling the various goods.

Registration for contestants is open through Friday, March 10, 2017, so you still have time to enter the baking competition. You can also help us promote the event by sharing gal2.org/cupcake with your friends, colleagues and social media.

Thank you to Trak Engineering, Inc., Computer Tutors USA, Inc., Law, Redd, Crona and Munroe, P.A., Clothesline and The MacLeod Family for their contributions. The Event Sponsors section of the event page was updated to reflect these sponsorships.

CAII Cupcakes and Cookies for Kids is a friendly annual competition for amateur and professional bakers, as well as an opportunity for the public to raise money for our program by sampling the various goods.

Registration for contestants is open through Friday, March 10, 2017, so you still have time to enter the baking competition. You can also help us promote the event by sharing gal2.org/cupcake with your friends, colleagues and social media.

Event Update

Thank you to Prime Meridian Bank for their contribution. The Event Sponsors section of the event page was updated to reflect their sponsorship.

CAII Cupcakes and Cookies for Kids is a friendly annual competition for amateur and professional bakers, as well as an opportunity for the public to raise money for our program by sampling the various goods.

Registration for contestants is open through Friday, March 10, 2017, so you still have time to enter the baking competition. You can also help us promote the event by sharing gal2.org/cupcake with your friends, colleagues and social media.

eForm Replacements

We have retired three of our eForms in favor of replacements within Optima, our web-based case management system.

The Child Visitation Report eForm (CVR), Continuing Education eForm (CEF) and Volunteer Application eForm (VAP) are discontinued and no longer available for use. Shortlinks previously in place for the CVR and CEF eForms now redirect to Optima for backward compatibility. The VAP shortlink now redirects to the Optima-based online volunteer application.

In addition, a new resource was also added to the "Forms and Documents" section of the Form and Document Library. "Dependency Acronyms" is a three-page list featuring common abbreviations and their meanings. It is available in the "Essentials" sub-section for download in PDF and Word format.

Training Event Update

One of our upcoming training classes for new volunteers has been rescheduled.

Volunteer Training: April 2017 takes place over six evenings. The second session in the series was moved up one day to Wednesday, April 5, 2017. The event page, event calendar and print flyer have been updated accordingly.

Fundraising Event Update

CAII Cupcakes and Cookies for Kids is a friendly annual competition for amateur and professional bakers, as well as an opportunity for the public to raise money for our program by sampling the various goods.

The Event Sponsors section of the event page is updated to reflect the new sponsorships. Thank you to the Lamont Family, Capital City Bank, Florida Department of Transportation, Alsco, Inc., Hopkins' Eatery, Newk's Eatery and WTXL Sunrise on ABC 27 for their various contributions.

Registration for contestants is open through Friday, March 10, 2017, so you still have time to enter the baking competition. You can also help us promote the event by sharing gal2.org/cupcake with your friends, colleagues and social media.

GAL Community Update

Modifications have been made to the GAL Community, a private and moderated discussion forum for volunteers and staff.

Several of the main topic boards have been renamed or had their descriptions updated. Numerous other updates were also applied behind-the-scenes. This restructuring was done in response to feedback and enhancement requests from our volunteers.

Join Us On Instagram

As part of an upcoming social media outreach campaign, the Second Judicial Circuit Guardian ad Litem Program is now on mobile photo-sharing site Instagram.

We have not yet made our first post on the social media site, but you can follow us at instagram.com/flguardian2 to discover when we do.